Recommendations for small business email hosting

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93 posts

Master Geek

#1555258 18-May-2016 23:26

Dynamic:

The cheaper P1 plan is still available at $6 (it was $4.90 from memory before the price rise), but you have to hunt for it. Here is a link: https://products.office.com/en-nz/exchange/compare-microsoft-exchange-online-plans

Right you are then! I didn't realise they did Hosted Exchange on it's own without the other Office 365 parts.

radomatic

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Master Geek

#1555259 18-May-2016 23:29

OP, you might be interested in some more thoughts.

I work for a (very large) business where half of the company uses Google Apps and the other half use Office 365. The team members that are on GApps rave about Gmail and how easy it is to use and how well the search works. They whinge and moan about nearly everything else. Our IT team like how easy it is to develop extra things that bolt on to GApps/Google Drive though. I remember when we started migrating to Gmail there was a lot of outcry around not being able to use Outlook anymore (which of course you can, we just wanted to embrace the whole browser-based/cloud thing).

The team members on 365 rarely complain about anything, but most of them are used to using Outlook and desktop apps anyway.

Suckerpunch

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Master Geek

#1555295 19-May-2016 07:58

Office 365 support is AMAZING considering the size of the company etc.

Same day support almost.

freitasm

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#1555300 19-May-2016 08:05

Microsoft replies or calls in around one hour from experience.

Twice I contacted Google and despite being a paid customer I was told to post in their public forums. No thanks.

guyl

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#1555301 19-May-2016 08:07

+1 Office 365. I am a mainly Apple user, but love Hosted Exchange. Pricing is good too

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#1555303 19-May-2016 08:13

freitasm: Microsoft replies or calls in around one hour from experience.

Twice I contacted Google and despite being a paid customer I was told to post in their public forums. No thanks.

Google support is a bit random. Once you can work out how to call them (which in itself can be difficult) they're usually good, but they do their absolute best to prevent you calling them. For example if you're trying to sign up to a paid plan you can't call them, only once you've signed up.

martyyn

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#1555417 19-May-2016 11:04

I spent most of yesterday afternoon looking at the pair of them and I'll post this here in the hope it may be relevant to the OP.

I myself use Google Apps and love it but I'm on my own with an N5 and a Chromebook. I'm looking at it for a client of mine who has a dozen staff. He's created an email address for each of them through his website host. Most of which have been set up solely to handle each individuals mobile phone account. All but three or four really have no need for email and could probably share a generic account (office@domain.com or something).

He chose the hosting email because he can create as many addresses as he likes and flexibility is greater than to have service guaranteed by the likes of Google/Office365. There hasn't been an outage in over three years so he figures why pay the money to Google/Microsoft.

But now he's looking to expand. He wants to buy several PC's, maybe a laptop, two of them have iphones and there are two ipads in the office for the staff to use, everyone else has androids. They need to upgrade from Office2003 which sits on one machine at the moment, be able to share documents and most importantly share a couple of calendars. Most of them need this from their phones, they wont be in front of PC's. So now the email is being sucked into the discussion around Apps vs Office365.

To create everyone as users quickly becomes expensive if they aren't going to use the services, so I'm not sure which way to go. Half the team use Google for their personal stuff, the others use Office products. I cant help but think Office is going to be more professional then Google Apps when it comes to documents and spreadsheets.

Am I right in thinking if we move the domain to either we have to move all the email addresses as well and create them as 'users' paying for each one ? If we go with Office365 the moment we shift the domain the webhosting email will cease to work wont it ?

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Dynamic

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#1555428 19-May-2016 11:25

martyyn: To create everyone as users quickly becomes expensive if they aren't going to use the services, so I'm not sure which way to go. Half the team use Google for their personal stuff, the others use Office products. I cant help but think Office is going to be more professional then Google Apps when it comes to documents and spreadsheets.

Am I right in thinking if we move the domain to either we have to move all the email addresses as well and create them as 'users' paying for each one ? If we go with Office365 the moment we shift the domain the webhosting email will cease to work wont it ?

$6 per email address per month is pretty reasonable in my book. Free Shared Mailboxes are a really nice sweetener (e.g. sales@ which can be accessed by several staff who also have their own email accounts). Messages are effectively backed up as they are in multiple locations, and deleted stuff can be recovered for 30 days.

We have one client sharing a single email account (companyname@companyname.co.nz) and they just tag emails with each others colour and drag into their own sub-folder. I thought it would be a nightmare but they insist it works well for them.

You can split an email domain across multiple providers, but it becomes a technical nightmare and should absolutely be avoided unless you need some extra stress in your life.

The ability to mix and match plans in Office 365 is really good in our experience. https://products.office.com/en-nz/business/compare-office-365-for-business-plans

I was slow to get on the Office 365 bus, but am now very enthusiastic about it (except the OneDrive file sync which is not as reliable as it should be so we use a 3rd party solution).

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martyyn

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#1555485 19-May-2016 12:16

Dynamic:

$6 per email address per month is pretty reasonable in my book. Free Shared Mailboxes are a really nice sweetener (e.g. sales@ which can be accessed by several staff who also have their own email accounts). Messages are effectively backed up as they are in multiple locations, and deleted stuff can be recovered for 30 days.....The ability to mix and match plans in Office 365 is really good in our experience. https://products.office.com/en-nz/business/compare-office-365-for-business-plans

This is what they would like to have. The three main staff (who are all long term) have their own email addresses and office suites as appropriate. They then have two shared email address with four people looking after each address (who chop and change). Then all 11 have access to shared documents and a couple of shared calendars.

Is that possible without all 11 staff having a $6 account as a minimum ?

You can see where there coming from if they can just create a free support@gmail.com account and just use it for the calendar functionality with their existing email accounts for the 8 transient people.

antoniosk

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#1555491 19-May-2016 12:23

radomatic:

Dynamic:

The cheaper P1 plan is still available at $6 (it was $4.90 from memory before the price rise), but you have to hunt for it. Here is a link: https://products.office.com/en-nz/exchange/compare-microsoft-exchange-online-plans

Right you are then! I didn't realise they did Hosted Exchange on it's own without the other Office 365 parts.

Can I combine this with Office365Home?

________

Antoniosk

Dynamic

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#1555499 19-May-2016 12:32

martyyn:

Dynamic:

$6 per email address per month is pretty reasonable in my book. Free Shared Mailboxes are a really nice sweetener (e.g. sales@ which can be accessed by several staff who also have their own email accounts). Messages are effectively backed up as they are in multiple locations, and deleted stuff can be recovered for 30 days.....The ability to mix and match plans in Office 365 is really good in our experience. https://products.office.com/en-nz/business/compare-office-365-for-business-plans

This is what they would like to have. The three main staff (who are all long term) have their own email addresses and office suites as appropriate. They then have two shared email address with four people looking after each address (who chop and change). Then all 11 have access to shared documents and a couple of shared calendars.

Is that possible without all 11 staff having a $6 account as a minimum ?

You can see where there coming from if they can just create a free support@gmail.com account and just use it for the calendar functionality with their existing email accounts for the 8 transient people.

If I understand you correctly, you would likely want the following:

- 3 accounts for the main staff (e.g. matthew, mark, luke@domain.co.nz) = $18 per month
- 2 accounts for other staff that will login with the same credentials (e.g. 4 users sharing sales@ and 4 users sharing support@) = $12 per month
- Create a free shared mailbox called for example annualleavecalendar@domain.co.nz = $0 per month and grant the 5 accounts above access to it
- That would be 5 paid accounts total @ $30 per month total and one free shared account at $0. The free shared account would not be able to be access from a mobile device (that is one of the few limitations).

The 3 main users can be granted access to see the sales@ and support@ accounts so the permanent staff can keep an eye on the temporary staff if required (seeing messages in and sent items).

Does that answer the question?

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martyyn

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#1555529 19-May-2016 12:47

Dynamic:

If I understand you correctly, you would likely want the following:

- 3 accounts for the main staff (e.g. matthew, mark, luke@domain.co.nz) = $18 per month
- 2 accounts for other staff that will login with the same credentials (e.g. 4 users sharing sales@ and 4 users sharing support@) = $12 per month
- Create a free shared mailbox called for example annualleavecalendar@domain.co.nz = $0 per month and grant the 5 accounts above access to it
- That would be 5 paid accounts total @ $36 per month total and one free shared account at $0. The free shared account would not be able to be access from a mobile device (that is one of the few limitations).

The 3 main users can be granted access to see the sales@ and support@ accounts so the permanent staff can keep an eye on the temporary staff if required (seeing messages in and sent items).

Does that answer the question?

Thanks Dynamic,

My understanding was the shared mailbox was nothing more than auto-forwarding email to the other users. But if we set up each of the two groups of 4 with the appropriate account on their phones we wont need the shared mailbox.

It was me thinking accounts had to be for individuals and not a generic sales@ account where they share the login details.

Dynamic

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#1555536 19-May-2016 12:54

martyyn:

Thanks Dynamic,

My understanding was the shared mailbox was nothing more than auto-forwarding email to the other users. But if we set up each of the two groups of 4 with the appropriate account on their phones we wont need the shared mailbox.

It was me thinking accounts had to be for individuals and not a generic sales@ account where they share the login details.

Pleasure to help. Multiple users logging into the one account is not significantly different from one user having a whole bunch of devices. You'll likely find a use for the free shared mailboxes. When staff leave, sometimes we convert their pai mailbox to a free shared mailbox and attach it to another user so that user can review the old staffer's historical email if required in the future.

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mdooher

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#1555615 19-May-2016 14:15

antoniosk:

Can I combine this with Office365Home?

the "issue" is what happened when you have a personal Microsoft account with office attached and a separate exchange plan with the "same" Microsoft ID..

I have this setup and it is not ideal but not the end of the world either. The issue is the two systems are separate, MS sees two separate accounts (one personal and one business) that happen to have the same login.

Anyhow... when you login to a Microsoft service it looks at the ID, realises you have two and asks if you want to use your business/school account of your home account.

It doesn't sound too bad but trust me if you are sharing office with your family, also have a real business account and have personal exchange it can be a bit frustrating

Matthew

michelangelonz

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Master Geek

#1555813 19-May-2016 20:33

+1 for Office 365.

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